The following e-filed documents, listed by NYSCEF document number (Motion 001) 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55 were read on this motion to/for ORDER MAINTAIN CLASS ACTION. DECISION + ORDER ON MOTION In February 2022, plaintiff Rafael Aldape commenced this class action against corporate defendants Ocinomled, LTD (d/b/a Delmonico Restaurant), Balarini Restaurant Corp. (d/b/a Arno Ristorant), Five “M” Corp. (d/b/a DK Restaurant), and 50/50 Restaurant Corp. (d/b/a Scaletta Restaurant), and individual defendants Milan Licul, Branko Turcinovic, Omer Grgurev, and Ferdo Grgurev. Plaintiff, a former employee at Delmonico Restaurant from 2018 to 2019, alleges that the individual defendants own and operate the four restaurants as part of a common enterprise and that tip and wage policies at these restaurants violate several provisions of the New York Labor Law. In this motion sequence, plaintiff moves pursuant to CPLR 901 and 902 for pre-discovery class certification. The proposed class consists of “all non-exempt employees employed by Defendants at Defendants’ Restaurants on or after March 2, 2015, to the present.” (See NYSCEF doc. no. 14 at 2, plaintiff’s proposed notice to class.) Defendants oppose class certification.1 For the following reasons, plaintiff’s motion for class certification is denied. BACKGROUND From January 2018 through April 2019, plaintiff was employed as a busser at Delmonico Restaurant at 56 Beaver Street, New York, New York in Lower Manhattan. Throughout his employment, plaintiff was paid hourly based on New York’s minimum wage for service employees. (NYSCEF doc. no. 24 at 8, plaintiff’s affidavit in support.) Plaintiff alleges Delmonico distributed his and his coworkers’ compensation using policies that violate provisions of Title 12 of the New York Code, Rules and Regulations Law, governing compensation for service work, and Article 6 of the New York Labor Law. Under §146-1.3 of the code, an employer may pay service employees at a rate that is lower the basic minimum hourly rate (a practice known as taking a “tip credit”) so long as the employees receive a tip-inclusive wage that is equal to or greater than the minimum hourly rate and only after the employer gives notice of the amount of credit taken prior to the start of employment. (See 12 NYCRR §146.1.3 [a], §146-2.2 [a].) Meanwhile, where an employee does both tipped and non-tipped work on a given shift, §146-2.9 prohibits an employer from claiming a tip credit where the non-tipped work is either (a) for two or more hours or (b) for more than twenty percent of his or her shift (whichever is less). (12 NYCRR §146-2.9.) Here, plaintiff avers that Delmonico failed to give him notice of its claimed tip-credit prior to starting his employment in January 2018 (NYSCEF doc. no. 24 at 7), and that Delmonico sometimes required him to clean, sweep, and mop the restaurant and perform other non-tipped work for more than twenty percent of his shift, such that it was not entitled to take tip credits for his work on those days. (Id. at 8; NYSCEF doc. no. 15 at 12, plaintiff’s memo in supp.) As to alleged New York Labor Law violations, §196-d proscribes employers and their agents from accepting or demanding any part of the gratuities received by their employees. (Labor Law §196-d; see also 12 NYCRR §146-2.14 [e] ["[To be eligible to receive shared tips] employees must perform, or assist in performing, personal service to patrons at a level that is a principal and regular part of their duties and is not merely occasional.”]) According to plaintiff, several Delmonico managers participated in the tipping pool despite (1) being agents of Delmonico and (2) not performing duties that make them eligible for tip sharing. (NYSCEF doc. no. 24 at 10.) Further, plaintiff alleges that Delmonico developed an unlawful time-shaving policy in which he was forced to deduct two hours for meal breaks on days he worked from 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. even though Delmonico required him to be on-call during such breaks and often required him to work through them. (NYSCEF doc. no. 2 at 36, complaint). Accordingly, plaintiff alleges that he was not paid approximately four to six hours per week for which he was not compensated in violation of Labor Law §652. (NYSCEF doc. no. 24 at 10.) Plaintiff brought this action on behalf of all non-exempt employees (including hosts, servers, bussers, cooks, line cooks, food preparers, bartenders, barbacks, dishwashers, porters, and delivery persons) employed at defendants’ restaurants, alleging that the individual defendants own and operate the four restaurants as a single entity (NYSCEF doc. no. 2 at 16) and that they violated the above-described statutes at each restaurant through similar compensation policies. Plaintiff relies exclusively on alleged conversations he had with six other busboys at Delmonico, each of whom, he asserts, had previously worked at one of the other three defendant-owned restaurants and had described to him similar policies. (NYSCEF doc. no. 24 at
